One June afternoon last year, as the summer sun beat down mercilessly
on scores of shoppers, a group of 200 bikers in bluecoloured uniforms
waving blue flags descended on the narrow main market street of Azamgarh
in Uttar Pradesh.
The deafening sound of crackers and dhols (drums), along with a group of bhangra dancers, made many believe that yet another political rally was afoot. This was no political procession though, but a 'Nokia Blue Brigade Rally' to announce the launch of the Finnish giant's dual-SIM handsets, a potent weapon conspicuous by its absence in the handset major's India arsenal.
Such systematic carpet bombing across the country has helped Nokia pull off something that was inconceivable a few years ago, to come from nowhere and claim a leadership position in the dual-SIM handset market. In the process, the iconic brand is fighting to regain ground it lost to multinational rivals as well as domestic Johnnie-Come-Latelys.
"We may have been late, but we have redefined the game," boasts Viral Oza, marketing director at Nokia India, who lets on that in the first month of launch, the company covered some 1.7 lakh Nokia outlets.
Nokia launched its first dual-SIM handset last June, two-and-a-half years after the likes of Micromax and Gfive made a splash. But in less than a year it has dethroned the first movers. According to Gfk, a market research firm, Nokia led with a 23% share in the dual-SIM segment in January 2012.
Samsung, GFive and Micromax followed with shares of 12.7%, 9.8% and 8.7%, respectively. Gfk pegs the market for dual-SIM handsets at 7.5 million in January of a total handset pie of 13.4 million units.
In 2010, shipments of multi-SIM handsets stood at close to 50 million, constituting a little over 30% of overall handset shipments, according to research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. That figure almost doubled last year, with the contribution of multi-SIM accounting for half of overall shipments.
The deafening sound of crackers and dhols (drums), along with a group of bhangra dancers, made many believe that yet another political rally was afoot. This was no political procession though, but a 'Nokia Blue Brigade Rally' to announce the launch of the Finnish giant's dual-SIM handsets, a potent weapon conspicuous by its absence in the handset major's India arsenal.
Such systematic carpet bombing across the country has helped Nokia pull off something that was inconceivable a few years ago, to come from nowhere and claim a leadership position in the dual-SIM handset market. In the process, the iconic brand is fighting to regain ground it lost to multinational rivals as well as domestic Johnnie-Come-Latelys.
"We may have been late, but we have redefined the game," boasts Viral Oza, marketing director at Nokia India, who lets on that in the first month of launch, the company covered some 1.7 lakh Nokia outlets.
Nokia launched its first dual-SIM handset last June, two-and-a-half years after the likes of Micromax and Gfive made a splash. But in less than a year it has dethroned the first movers. According to Gfk, a market research firm, Nokia led with a 23% share in the dual-SIM segment in January 2012.
Samsung, GFive and Micromax followed with shares of 12.7%, 9.8% and 8.7%, respectively. Gfk pegs the market for dual-SIM handsets at 7.5 million in January of a total handset pie of 13.4 million units.
In 2010, shipments of multi-SIM handsets stood at close to 50 million, constituting a little over 30% of overall handset shipments, according to research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. That figure almost doubled last year, with the contribution of multi-SIM accounting for half of overall shipments.
|
saket kumar
pgdm2nd.sem.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment